Current happenings:

I seem to have ended up back in a health mix of technical development and best practice analysis in a technical business analyst role at Optus Singtel a major Australian Pacific telecomms company. This would normally be great as it's just the right balanace of the kind of work I like... Lots of meetings, plenty of writing, requirements engineering, stimulating challenges, lots of responsibility and just the right mix of controlled process, soft systems methodologies and formal software engineering. The only problem being that this time it's working on CRM systems instead of Service Management systems and so has meant me learning the ins and outs of the sales and marketing process plus what amounts to one of the most difficult vendors to work with I've ever encountered. 3 project managers have got to near breakdown point, I've taken to regularly reviewing my NDA to check how much I can complain about these people online and it was suggested that I use the company as a dissertation topic on vendor management. It's enough to make me cry, and certainly enough to make me want to leave what would otherwise be a very enjoyable position.

But wait... there's more!

After years of helping out with a number of concert tours, nightclubs, goth events, festivals, websites and lord knows it was time to actually take the reign on something and so I sacrificed a great deal of my spare time (and sanity) to work in the music and promotions industry. Unsurprisingly this is focussed on "dark alternative" and goth related businesses. For music promotions I'm one of the primary partners in Rivetting Promotions an Australian touring and CD distribution company. Recently we have been responsible for bringing Nitzer Ebb, The Genitorturers and Apoptygma Berzerk to Australia and New Zealand with upcoming tours with KMFDM and Combichrist planned for the second half of 2007. I'm also co-owner of Fiend Magazine, Australia's only dark alternative magazine of which I am the editor. This involves a lot of telecommuting and organising a massive volunteer staff. Sadly these businesses are still growing and for all my late nights I mostly see the occasional pat on the back and if I'm really lucky a free plane ticket but at least other people seem to appreciate our output.

...And before you ask no I don't sleep much, yes I have problems with stress management and no I don't expect that many people could handle my workload. At the end of the day I do get to meet some cool people and I do get the odd funky business card but you have to really love what you do before you can take on as much as I do and I don't suggest you try the same.

What did I do before then:

My career can pretty much be summed up as spending much of my time running away from the alterno-geek web programmer image and trying to reposition myself in the scarey and much more middle aged male filled corporate world; because this is about the only place I can settle into process engineering and best practice support - which is what I love.

I put myself through the second half of my degree working for WebHumans, the web development department of my university (Griffith). At EIIS (web humans) I did a lot of web development based on the corporate site templates, before being promoted to Assistant Systems Developer dealing mostly with web administration and reporting. This has given me an intense hatred of WebTrends and level loading across supercomputers.

I have also worked in the academic section of Griffith University. During my degree I worked as a tutor for the CIT department, and after returning from the UK got a bevvy of offers for roles around the university. I worked for the Software Quality Institute at the university as a research assistant working on the ISO15504 training materials (from the SPICE project), while also tutoring and lecturing in Software Quality Principles, Computer Mediated Communications (An online communities subject focusing on human interaction online as well as web technologies including Jscript ASP, Shockwave, SQL and HTML) and Technical Ethics. I like to think I'm a good teacher, and I certainly had a lot of praise from both faculty and students alike ... after they got over the shock of being taught by a hyperactive midget of a goth wench that is.

After working at SQI/Griffith I went on to a "real" IT job at a company called Red Oxygen as a Software Engineer. Red Oxygen produces PC to SMS software including plug ins for Notes, Outlook, and Outlook Express as well as stand alone SMS clients.

As part of my life reconstruction in 2004 I sold out and became a full flight Goth Corper (2020 here we come) working for Suncorp, an Australian banking, finance and insurance conglomerate. I was hired into the Process Improvements team to do ISO15504 consulting, spending my life running around in suits and heels correcting process documents and drinking more coffee than is humanly good for you.

But after a restructure I was placed in the IT Performance Metrics team working on the project/service management software and metrics tools solutions. This meant a lot of similar technical consulting work, frequently with mainframe systems and ITIL based processes and analyst work focusing on technical and project documentation and solutions specification.

Then it was off to be a Business Analyst for Cement Australia doing much the same work as I was doing in the Metrics team at Suncorp. Technical specifications and systems analysis work for their Service Management solution, drafting ITIL processes and consulting for their IT support improvement program... only with one of the most frustrating pieces of software I've encountered... still I did get to spend a lot of time talking about gadgets with the developer and World of Warcraft with the support staff.

Then onto what was oddly one of my all time favourite jobs, even though it was pure ITIL consultancy with no development. Working as a member of an onsite Sun Microsystems Managed Services team at a major telco working with their network engineers on Incident and Problem Management. The actual work didn't matter so much as the environment and the people I worked with; pure Sun technician nerdery with weekly geeking, field trips to the Apple store and the all time best manager I've had if only Sun had more analyst and consultant jobs in Australia I'd be set.